


Love is Not a Victory March

by donotforgetme24601



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 07:46:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donotforgetme24601/pseuds/donotforgetme24601
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I do not own any part of Sherlock and I make no money from this piece.</p></blockquote>





	Love is Not a Victory March

It was never about love, Sherlock and Jim’s arrangement. It was about winning.

They met at street corners and fought in the only way they could. They threw down gauntlets at gas stations and picked them up in motel rooms (never too seedy, neither of them cherished the thought of bedbugs or lice; no, never too seedy, just seedy enough). They met at forgotten places in ghost towns, one decrepit barn like a pencil smudge of grey against brown-yellow grass and dusk-shadowed sky; they stared each other down across pavement so hot that it twisted their faces into gruesome masks, and whoever caved first, lost that particular battle, would be at the other’s mercy (it was always Sherlock, in these cases, Jim’s face in twisted caricature reminded him too much of a hollow and a cool night and his body betraying him, seeing monsters behind gas masks). Sherlock accepted his defeats with cool dignity; he paid Jim back in equal measures. He made Jim’s body betray him too.

This time, Jim lured Sherlock to Rome with a murder. It had become a sexual thing for Sherlock, murder. No longer just the head-rush, no longer just the pleasure of everything coming together, but now with dark eyes reflected in every pool of blood, Jim’s face in forged artifacts and the results of “gas leaks”. He was still the addict, ever the addict, but no longer the virgin. The case led Sherlock to a part of Rome behind the cracked tourist veneer, to a place with chipping murals and streets washed with dishwater and urine, to an old house with holes in the ceiling, plaster flesh collapsing to reveal the illness within(“the door was open, Lestrade,” he would say later. Lestrade would ask if it was open because he opened it and Sherlock would smile and Lestrade would sigh. He wondered if Sherlock had deleted the definition of “legal” from his hard drive.). He rummaged through the not-as-well-hidden-as-the-residents-thought (didn’t think to varnish over the wear marks, sloppy, sloppy) drug supplies and he found a small brown bottle of poison and a note with the name of a restaurant signed with an x.

It had started with “Jim Moriarty x” and had evolved and shifted through “Jim” and “Moriarty”, “James” when he was angry and “Mori” when he was affectionate, “Richard Brook” when he was jealous of John, when he wanted to make Sherlock feel weak, finally settling to a bold, elegant “x”. Sherlock thought it suited him. He responded in kind, a terse SH.

He arrived at the restaurant at eight, saw a flash of Westwood, a fox tie-pin winking out of the corner of his eye, strode down an alley and pressed Jim against the wall, gripping his soft, short hair and kissing him in such a way that Sherlock hardly thought it should be called kissing.

“Buy a girl dinner first,” Jim pouted, twisting his lips into an exaggerated moue. “Honestly, and you call yourself a gentleman.”

“I never called myself that.” And Jim’s face shifted suddenly, he turned and maneuvered, pressed Sherlock against the bricks and bit down, hard, on Sherlock’s neck.

“Can’t have you ruining my suit with those filthy bricks,” he whispered against Sherlock’s clavicle. “Westwood.” And Sherlock huffed out a laugh because Jim could afford as much Westwood as he wanted, not that he would need to buy it (“Everyone has a sin, everyone can be convinced,” Jim liked to drawl. “‘Oh, Sinnerman, where you gonna run to…?’” He would sing until Sherlock shut him up, and Sherlock was all too happy to oblige.)

Jim led Sherlock up a fire escape that creaked and screamed, dropping dried blood rust into the gutters, shedding its loose black paint in eager patches. They entered a house through a balcony that overlooked the street, and Jim immediately pushed Sherlock back on the bed and followed him down, nipping his jaw (Sherlock had learned long ago not to ask whose bed they were in; he never liked the answer, if indeed Jim did answer.)

Sherlock pulled Jim’s head back and up, leaned in and bit his lip until it was full and bruised, flipped him and straddled him, kissing him harshly, tasting strong, bitter coffee, chocolate, and cinnamon. Jim tore his shirt, buttons clicking against the floor like claws, scattering to the shadowed corners of the room. Sherlock paid him back: the winking fox pin skittered under the nightstand, obsidian cufflinks found a new home somewhere in folds of sheets. They divested each other of trousers and pants with fevered hands, lay naked in a nest of Westwood with torn seams and jammed zippers and purple silk shirts with disembodied sleeves. Sherlock sighed mournfully over the death of another shirt; Jim did not just arrange human murders.

“That was my favorite.” He griped, pinching Jim’s nipple (which was small and pink and really quite lovely, like a crushed petal on his chest; Sherlock wondered if it tasted like rosewater; he wondered how it would feel against his tongue; he wondered how such delicacy could bloom from the chest of a man who was anything but.)

“Sentimentality,” Jim reprimanded, licking up Sherlock’s jaw, running his nails down Sherlock’s side. “How oooordin--.” Sherlock gripped his cock and gave it a long, rough stroke before Jim could finish the word; Jim’s head tipped back on a groan, exposing a pale expanse of throat, and Sherlock darted down and traced the barest edge of teeth over his pulse. Jim shuddered and gasped, twisted with the most indelicacy Sherlock had ever seen and scrabbled through the nightstand drawer, unearthing a bottle of lube and presenting it like an offering. His hands were shaking.

Sherlock took it and slicked both their cocks, tossing the bottle aside afterwards. He wrapped one long hand around both their cocks, pressing them together (Jim had called his fingers “artist’s fingers” once in a moment of post-coital passion. Sherlock never mentioned it with the implicit compromise being that Jim never brought up that he had once screamed John’s name as he orgasmed. He used his artist’s fingers now to devastating results, proving to Jim that he was certainly not ordinary) Jim bucked in his hand, pulled himself closer so that his knees straddled Sherlock’s hips, met Sherlock’s eyes and very deliberately licked his lips, lingering over his bitten bottom lip. Sherlock buried his head in Jim’s shoulder with a moan, sliding his hand faster and harder up their cocks and he felt a smile against his chest, Jim celebrating a victory, running tongue and teeth along Sherlock’s collarbone. He dug his nails into Sherlock’s arse, leaving red crescents, leaving his mark, because Jim always leaves a signature, and Sherlock growls at him, pulls his head back with his free hand, ravages his mouth until Jim jerks his head to the side to pull on Sherlock’s earlobe with his teeth.

“Well, hurry it up, then, honey,” Jim goads, his voice like coffee grounds, dark and bitter. “Haven’t got all night, people to kill, you know. I suppose you wouldn’t though,” he thrusts up into Sherlock’s hand. “living with oooooordinary John Watson,” Sherlock gasps and cries out, he loses his measured strokes. “playing Cluedo,” He spits the last word and then drawls the “o” out, dragging it over Sherlock’s skin. “You’re boring me, Sherlock.” He hisses through clenched teeth, and Sherlock meets his dilated eyes, meets his challenging smile, and whispers, “Liar.” Jim comes with a shout and an acquiesce, gasping and thrusting into Sherlock’s hand, and Sherlock comes with claiming Jim’s bruised mouth and tangling a hand in his hair.

They share a bottle of wine and Jim drugs Sherlock’s glass, disappears by morning, becomes a faceless monster in well-cut suits again. Sherlock can’t say he’s surprised.

It was never about love, after all. It was about winning.

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own any part of Sherlock and I make no money from this piece.


End file.
